Arn Þorfdr 19^II

Ek em, síz ýtar hnekkðu
jarla sætt, es vættik,
— jǫfn fengusk hræ hrǫfnum —
hegju trauðr at segja.
Sleit fyr eyjar útan
allvaldr blôu tjaldi;
hafði hreggsvǫl dúfa
hrími fezk of líma.

Ek em trauðr at segja hegju, síz ýtar hnekkðu sætt jarla, es vættik; jǫfn hræ fengusk hrǫfnum. Allvaldr sleit blôu tjaldi fyr útan eyjar; hreggsvǫl dúfa hafði fezk hrími of líma.

I am loath to speak of events, since men thwarted the truce between the jarls, as I anticipated; from both sides alike flesh was found for ravens. The mighty ruler wore to shreds the dark awnings out beyond the islands; the snow-cold billow had fastened itself in frost about the mast.

Mss: Flat(135rb) (Orkn)

Readings: [1] Ek em: Em ek Flat    [4] trauðr: ‘trudr’ Flat    [6] blôu: ‘blꜳ’ Flat    [8] fezk: ‘fast’ Flat

Editions: Skj AI, 347, Skj BI, 320, Skald I, 162, NN §§834, 835; Flat 1860-8, II, 439, Orkn 1913-16, 130-1 n., ÍF 34, 122 n. 2 (ch. 56); Whaley 1998, 303-6.

Context: The st. is cited at the same curiously unsuitable point as sts 20 and 24 (see Context to st. 20).

Notes: [All]: The st. seems to open a sequence containing sts 19-22 about the battle off Rauðabjǫrg (probably Roberry) between Þorfinnr and his nephew Rǫgnvaldr; cf. also Arn Lv. — [1] ek em ‘I am’: The emendation (or normalisation) of ms. ‘em ek’ to ek em is necessary in order to supply hending with hnek-. — [1] ýtar ‘men’: It seems likely that the men who, directly or indirectly, destroyed the peace between the jarls were Kálfr Árnason and his Norw. followers who, according to Orkn ch. 25, stirred up discontent in Þorfinnr over Rǫgnvaldr controlling two thirds of the Isles. Kálfr’s support for Þorfinnr is commemorated in BjHall Kálffl 8^I. — [3] jǫfn hræ fengusk hrǫfnum ‘from both sides alike flesh was found for ravens’: As Björn Magnússon Ólsen (1909a, 299) pointed out, the sentence cannot mean that an equal number of men were slain on both sides at Rauðabjǫrg, since st. 22/3-4 state that one jarl’s losses were much smaller. — [4] trauðr ‘loath’: Ms. ‘trudr’ looks like trúðr ‘juggler’, but can have no meaning in this context. — [5-8]: The helmingr is difficult to interpret, and its second couplet is almost certainly corrupt. Its content, detailed seafaring description, contrasts so sharply with that of the first helmingr that one might suspect that the two originally belonged to separate sts. — [5, 6] sleit blôu tjaldi ‘wore to shreds the dark awnings’: (a) Slíta ‘tear, break’ usually governs an acc. object, but it is also used in the sense ‘wear out’ with a dat. object denoting some kind of clothing or footwear. Jesch (2001a, 164-5) suggests that tjald here, as in Arn Hryn 16/4, refers to a sail. She points out that a sail is more likely than awnings to have been worn out at sea and that sails are described as ‘blue, dark’ in Sigv Knútdr 8/2^I bl segl; reference to a sail would also be consonant with the probable reference to a mast in l. 8 (líma). (b) An attractive alternative would be to take slíta tjǫldum as a phrase synonymous with bregða tjǫldum ‘strike tents/take down awnings’ and related idioms. Clearing a ship of its awnings would be a pregnant action: a necessary preliminary to a battle or a great voyage (cf. ÞjóðA Har 2), but slíta tjǫldum/tjaldi does not appear to have been used in this sense. (c) Björn Magnússon Ólsen (1909a, 299) suggested that sætt ‘truce, peace’ in l. 2 is carried over into the second helmingr and understood as object to allvaldr sleit ‘the mighty ruler tore’ in l. 5, but this seems improbable, especially since there is no trace of such a linkage between the two helmingar in any other st. by Arnórr. — [5] eyjar ‘the islands’: It is impossible to know whether the word is to be read as the common noun or as the place-name equivalent to Orkneyjar ‘Orkney Islands’, as apparently in st. 24 (see Note to st. 24/5). — [7-8] hreggsvǫl dúfa hafði fezk hrími ‘the snow-cold billow had fastened itself in frost’: The nom. hreggsvǫl dúfa ‘snow-cold billow’ is subject to hafði which, since it has no object, must be an auxiliary verb, forming a pluperfect tense with a p. p. (a) There is no p. p. in the helmingr as it stands but the emendation of ‘fast’ to fezk, i.e. fest-sk from festa ‘fasten’, adopted here produces one. Alternatives are: (b) Björn Magnússon Ólsen suggested emending hrími to hrímat ‘encrusted with frost’ (1909, 301; also Finnbogi Guðmundsson, ÍF 34). This is plausible, and the verb hríma is known in ModIcel. (Sigfús Blöndal 1920-4), but the only trace of it in ON is in the past participles óhrímaðr and óhrímðr, which mean ‘not encrusted with soot’ (Fritzner: úhrímaðr; úhrímðr). (c) Kock (NN §835) emends líma to límat ‘encrusted’ and reads: Hafði hreggsvǫl dúfa | hrími fast um límat ‘The snow-cold billow had encrusted [it] thickly with frost’. An objection to this is that the object of hafði ... límat must be understood as a repetition, now acc. sg., of blu tjaldi ‘dark sail/awnings’ in l. 6. An advantage is that sleit tjaldi ‘wore out the sail/awnings in the previous cl. would be explained. — [8] of líma ‘about the mast’: (a) Lími ‘rod, twig, broom’ here probably has the sense ‘mast’ (so also Finnbogi Guðmundsson, ÍF 34), just as vǫndr can mean ‘twig, rod’ and ‘mast’ and indeed is used by Arnórr in this sense in Hryn 4/5; cf. also laukr ‘leek, upright plant, mast’. The resulting image of sea-spray frosting the mast is entirely credible and finds approximate parallels in OE poetry (Whaley 1998, 306). (b) Björn Magnússon Ólsen (1909a, 300-1) suggested that lími shares with vǫndr another meaning: the stripe or coloured decoration on a sail, or here on the ship’s awnings. He reads líma blu tjaldi ‘the decoration of the dark awnings’ together as object to ‘the wave had thickly encrusted with frost’. But this assumes tjaldi to be a poss. dat., which is otherwise very unusual when the possessor is an inanimate object. (The parallels cited by Björn, in NS §100 anm. 3, are not close.)

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Jesch, Judith. 2001a. Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse. Woodbridge: Boydell.
5. Sigfús Blöndal. 1920-4. Islandsk-dansk ordbog / Íslensk-dönsk orðabók. Reykjavík, Copenhagen and Kristiania (Oslo): Verslun Þórarins B. Þorlákssonar / Aschehoug.
6. Whaley, Diana, ed. and trans. 1998. The Poetry of Arnórr jarlaskáld: An Edition and Study. Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies 8. Turnhout: Brepols.
7. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
8. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
9. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
10. ÍF 34 = Orkneyinga saga. Ed. Finnbogi Guðmundsson. 1965.
11. Björn Magnússon Ólsen. 1909a. ‘Om nogle vers af Arnórr jarlaskáld’. ANF 25, 289-302.
12. Orkn 1913-16 = Sigurður Nordal, ed. 1913-16. Orkneyinga saga. SUGNL 40. Copenhagen: Møller.
13. Internal references
14. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Orkneyinga saga’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=47> (accessed 11 May 2024)
15. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2009, ‘Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Hrynhenda, Magnússdrápa 16’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 202-3.
16. Alison Finlay (ed.) 2012, ‘Bjarni gullbrárskáld Hallbjarnarson, Kálfsflokkr 8’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 889.
17. Diana Whaley 2009, ‘ Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Lausavísa’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 280-1. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=2982> (accessed 11 May 2024)
18. Matthew Townend (ed.) 2012, ‘Sigvatr Þórðarson, Knútsdrápa 8’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 659.
19. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2009, ‘Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Stanzas about Haraldr Sigurðarson’s leiðangr 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 151-2.
20. Not published: do not cite ()